


I'm Not One Of Those Who Can Easily Hide

by knitwit1912



Series: Capsicoul Variations [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Capsicoul - Freeform, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Genderswap, Phyllis Coulson - Freeform, Phyllis Coulson/Stephanie Rogers, School Reunion, Stephanie Rogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:57:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitwit1912/pseuds/knitwit1912
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephanie agrees to go to Phyllis' high school reunion, and has an idea how to make the night more interesting: pretend they're dating.  As you might expect, it's not only Phyl's former classmates that are being fooled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Not One Of Those Who Can Easily Hide

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first what will likely be a series of Capsicoul short fics, some of which will involve genderswapping on the part of one or both of the main parties. Those with Stephanie and Phyl may or may not tie in to a larger genderswapped Capsicoul work that I haven't started posting yet; this one doesn't.

Phyl tugged at the shoulders on her black dress for what Steph thought must have been the hundredth time and Steph fought back the urge to grab her hands and tell her to stop. Phyl had been standing in front of the mirror in the SHIELD apartment for ten minutes now, and she hadn’t stopped making adjustments here, adjustments there, touching her hair, her neckline, her face.

“Again, I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to do this for me. It seems a bit above-and-beyond to go to someone else’s high school reunion and—“

“Phyl.” This time Steph did grab her hands. “I already told you twice, it’s fine. We have a deal, remember? I go with you do your high school reunion, you go with me to the exhibition opening at the Museum of Fine Arts.”

“As the Avengers’ P.A., yes. You going to my high school reunion isn’t exactly the same thing.”

“A big party with people that are pretty much strangers who are mainly there to show off how successful and important they are? Sounds pretty similar to me.” Steph opened her clutch, checking she had everything she needed; not that it could fit much. “Besides, there’s nothing I’d rather do than pump your old classmates for embarrassing stories from your teenage years. Toni was pretty insistent that I wasn’t allowed back into my room at the Tower without getting something juicy.”

Phyl didn’t laugh, and Steph looked up again to see Phyl giving her one of her “agent” looks. “I was kidding. Come on, what’s got you all wound up about going to your reunion?”

Phyl sighed, looking away. “High school was hell. I hated every minute of it, never really found many friends, and…I wasn’t…out at the time. I couldn’t be. I dated guys, some of whom I was interested in and some of whom I wasn’t, so that I could pretend that I was only interested in guys, even though I knew I wasn’t. I hated myself because I couldn’t be like everyone else and it took a long time for me to get over that.”

“So by me going with you…”

Phyl looked at her this time, her smile a little sheepish and sad. “I said on the registration form that you were a friend, but considering the rumours that went around during high school I don’t think anyone’s going to believe that. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t put you in this position, we should just go somewhere else and—“

“ _Phyl_. Look, we don’t have to do this if you really don’t want to. But if you really want to prove something…I’m up for it.”

Phyl turned, searching Steph’s face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don’t we go for it and pretend we’re a couple? Show them who you really are and how comfortable you are with that?” Steph said, not listening to the part of her brain warning her that she maybe wasn’t thinking this through enough. It wasn’t like not thinking things through had always failed for her in the past; just the opposite in some cases.

“You realize if we do this there’s a good chance that it’ll get out into the press, right?”

“I haven’t exactly been hiding, Phyl. Besides, there’s no guarantee someone will recognize me looking like this,” Steph said, gesturing to her new, much shorter haircut, to the makeup and the cobalt blue silk wrap dress she was wearing. She didn’t always get recognized when she was wearing her civvies, after all; if anything this was even more different than what people were used to seeing her in. “And don’t apologize again. You can return the favor tomorrow night so I don’t have to deal with guys trying to get close to my chest all night.”

“In my experience, being on the arm of another woman isn’t always a deterrent.”

Steph slipped her feet into her silver ballet flats. “Anyway, just think of it as going undercover.”

“Says the soldier that doesn’t do undercover ops,” Phyl said, but at least now there was a teasing note in her voice.

“Hey, first time for everything.”

 

“Phyl, you should see this!”

Phyl felt Steph’s hand touch her back as she was signing the register and picking up the name badges for her and Steph under the watchful eye and brilliantly fake smile of the registration desk volunteer, Stacey Kimble. As Stacey had been head of the cheerleading squad and Queen Bee of the school for their junior and senior year, a small, petty part of her had hoped that Stacey would look ten years older than anyone else at the reunion. The fact that Stacey looked about five years younger than everyone else was probably appropriate karmic punishment.

She looked up as she finished and saw Stacey’s jaw drop for a second--whether because she’d recognized Steph or just because of Steph’s general appearance she couldn’t be sure--before Phyl turned to see Steph smiling down at her, her eyes sparkling. Undercover op, right. Smile on, confident posture. She’d been undercover dozens of times, sometimes pretending to be part of a couple. She could do this, even if she’d suddenly remembered that she was going to be pretending to be a couple with _Captain America_. She could feel that old awkwardness from their first meeting creeping back, and forced herself to take a deep breath before speaking.

“Badges first, sweetheart,” she said, handing Steph her badge, and she saw Steph blink at the term of endearment. “Stace, this is my date, Stephanie.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stacey said, still looking a little stunned, but covering it up admirably. “I didn’t realize—she was listed as your friend on the registration form.”

“You know how things can change in just a couple months,” Phyl said with a saucy grin. “Anyway, I’d better get out of the way. See you around!”

“Not a friend of yours?” Steph asked, as they slowly shuffled with the crowd headed for the main doors to the ballroom.

“The head of the cheerleading squad, homecoming queen our senior year, most popular girl in school? Not a friend. Oh, God,” Phyl said, spotting what was causing the traffic jam on the way into the ballroom. Just inside the doors were a series of cardboard-backed posters with everyone’s freshman-year and graduation pictures. For a moment, Phyl had a vision of finding the person who decided that embarrassing photos would be a good idea and using SHIELD’s technology to subscribe them to the nastiest porn sites she could find.

“That’s what I wanted you to see. I couldn’t get close enough to find yours last time,” Steph said. Phyl tried to move past, but Steph was heading for the posters, and Phyl was pulled along in her wake.

“We should really take our seats for dinner—“

Steph grinned. “I know a distraction maneuver when I see one. Come on, it’ll only take a second.”

Phyl spotted her photo only a second before Steph did, so she didn’t have time to direct her attention somewhere else. It looked worse than she remembered. Her freshmanphoto featured long, stick-straight hair parted down the middle, hideous frilly blouse, enormous eyeglasses, and braces; her graduation photo was only marginally improved by most of her clothes being covered up by a graduation gown and the loss of the braces, her permed hair not being much of an improvement. The gawky teenage girl smiling timidly out at her felt like an almost complete stranger.

“Wow, Phyl, that’s…” Steph seemed at a loss for words, and Phyl couldn’t blame her.

“Horrific, I know.”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.” A smile was twitching at the corner of Steph’s mouth, and Phyl had the feeling Steph was trying to keep from laughing.

“I’m going to need a drink. When you’re done giggling, meet me at the bar over there,” Phyl said, nodding at the bar over to one side of the room.

To Steph’s credit, she was only a step behind Phyl as she walked over to the bar. “Come on, Phyl. You’ve seen pictures of me before—“ She stopped as they reached the bar, only continuing once Phyl had placed her order and the bartender had turned away from them, though she kept her voice low. “Before the serum. I looked pretty awkward myself, and my school years weren’t anything to talk about.”

Phyl led them over to one side of the room where they could talk without being overheard. “I know. It’s just…you were still you, even when you were smaller. It’s not just the way I looked. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was a very different person then. I’d like to think I’m a lot more confident and put-together now than I was then, and I don’t like to think about how much I wasn’t any of those things when I was younger.”

“I wasn’t exactly the person you know when I was a teenage girl, either, and I’m not sure you could describe me as confident even when I got older. You never saw me when Bucky tried to hook me up with guys,” Steph said. “I’m sure the guy I dropped a tray of hot dogs on wouldn’t have called me confident. But look at it this way; seeing the pictures and remembering how dorky you were just shows how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown.”

Steph put her hand on Phyl’s arm, and Phyl glanced down at it for a moment, feeling her mouth go dry for a moment before she pulled herself together. Pretending to be a couple, remember?

“Except for when I tell my hero I watched her while she was sleeping,” Phyl says with a self-deprecating smile.

“Except for that,” Steph said with an answering grin, and Phyl felt a little flutter in her chest as Steph took her hand, still grinning.

Phyl opened her mouth to say something and try and distract herself from the physical reactions she was determined to ignore, but before she could say anything one of the organizers stepped up to the podium at the front of the room and asked people to be seated for dinner.

“Come on, let’s find our seats. I’m starving,” Steph said, tugging on Phyl’s hand.

“You’re still going to be starving after dinner. I should have put in an advance order with the pizza place down the block for when we get back.”

“I put their number on my cell so we can call from the car on the way back,” Steph said with a wink as they threaded the way through the tables.

 

On Steph’s part, the only bad thing about the dinner was that there wasn’t enough food for her taste, though that was mostly down to her metabolism, rather than any stinginess on the part of the caterers. It was something she was used to at these sort of events, and she’d had a couple peanut butter sandwiches before leaving the apartment to try and take the edge off her hunger, so that she didn’t embarrass Phyl by wolfing down each course.

Besides that, though, dinner was pretty nice, actually. They’d been seated with a couple people that Phyl had apparently been at least friendly acquaintances with during high school, and they were able to keep conversation going fairly smoothly and pleasantly.

“I have to admit, I never would have guessed you’d go into law enforcement,” the man on Phyl’s left, Glenn, said. “I always figured you to go into theatre school, considering you were usually there during lunches and after school.”

Steph turned from cooing at pictures of her neighbour’s infant granddaughter. “I didn’t know you were in the theatre department.”

Phyl looked like she was trying to chew her prime rib faster so she could speak, but Glenn got there first. “Phyllis was in drama club the entire time we were in high school. You were mostly behind the scenes, though, weren’t you?”

Phyl swallowed. “I had a couple small parts here and there but most of the time I was on the tech side of things.”

“Scariest stage manager we ever had,” Steph’s neighbour, Jean, said. “If anyone was screwing around, she would just give them this look that was enough to put the fear of God into them.”

“I had Dean Whitfield and Jay Albright as scenery movers; I had to scare the hell out of them. Remember the pranks they would play?” Phyl said, and conversation quickly turned to reminiscing about the adventures the two boys had had. From the sound of it, Steph thought it would have been like going to school with Fred and George Weasley.

Steph leaned close to Phyl, tilting her mouth toward Phyl’s ear. “Managing things behind the scenes with frightening competence? Yeah, that doesn’t sound like you at all.”  
Even in the dim light, Steph could see Phyl’s cheeks turning a little pink, and she felt a little warmth bloom in her stomach at the sight. Maybe it was just that Phyl was usually so unflappable, but she liked being able to get Phyl ruffled.

She tried not to tease Phyl too much during dinner, though there were a few times she couldn’t resist. After dessert was cleared away and a few faster songs had pulled people onto the dance floor, Phyl stood at the first bar of the first slow song and Steph suddenly had a feeling she was going to take her opportunity for revenge.

“Come on, let’s get on the dance floor before it fills up,” Phyl said, taking Steph’s hand.

“Phyl, about that…I really can’t dance.”

“Then it’s about time you learned,” Phyl said with a smile that seemed more than a little smug, then added in an undertone, “Besides, it would probably look suspicious if we didn’t dance all night.”

Phyl pulled her over to the dance floor and wrapped Steph’s right arm around her. “Right hand on my back, left hand in my right. Now just sway back and forth in time to the music. Just follow my lead.”

Slowly, Phil started rocking from side to side to the beat of the music, and glancing up at the others on the dance floor, Steph saw with some relief that most of the other couples were pretty much doing the same thing. She couldn’t help but notice more than a few stares as she looked around, and it wasn’t like they were the only same-sex couple on the dance floor; they were probably the only one with that kind of height and apparent age difference, however.

“This is it?” Steph asked, before she could catch herself and say the same thing with a little less bluntness.

Phyl laughed, and Steph’s breath caught in her throat for a second; it wasn’t often she saw Phyl give a full-on laugh, closing her eyes and tilting her head back with mirth.

“For a lot of people, yeah. Though most people would move their feet a bit too,” Phyl said, and Steph felt Phyl pull her along as Phyl took a small step to the side. “It’s a little more unusual for people to do a full-on waltz or foxtrot or something.”

“Huh. Guess I just had to wait for the average dancing ability to come down to my level.”

Phyl leaned in closer and shook her head, her earrings swaying with the movement. Steph belatedly realized that she was staring at the curve of Phyl’s neck, her heart beating faster as she caught the smell of Phyl’s hair, her perfume…

Phyl looked up at her then, their eyes meeting and her breath froze again, unable to pull her eyes away. For a moment there was such a feeling of clarity it nearly knocked her off her feet, a bolt from the blue realization that she wanted to make Phyl laugh and smile more, wanted to make her blush…and she really, really wanted to kiss her.

And then coming just as fast, another realization: _Oh shit, this is going to get complicated._

 

Phyl closed the door to the SHIELD apartment behind her with a sigh of relief and leaned against it, letting her eyes droop closed for a moment. Thank God that was over; not just the reunion itself, but the pretending to be a couple part.

When she was a teenager, pretending to be Captain America’s date would have been the greatest moment of her life; now she knew better. Now she knew _Steph_ , not just "the Captain", and knowing Steph's kindness, her dry wit and her stubbornness, her self-deprecation and her temper, all that made it a thousand times worse. Standing that close to Steph, feeling Steph’s arm wrapped around her as they danced…it was like every soft, yearning feeling she’d ever felt about Steph had sprung out of the box she’d carefully crammed them into to be able to work with Steph every day, to enjoy the “just friends” relationship they’d had. Dragging Steph onto the dance floor for the slow songs? Bad idea. It was impossible to stick with just friendly thoughts when someone you’d had a crush on forever was slowly turning you across the dance floor to “Wonderful Tonight” and “Your Song”.

“You okay?” Steph asked, breaking into Phyl’s reverie.

“Yeah, just relieved that that’s over. Mission accomplished; I got to look like a competent adult in front of people who only knew me as an awkward teenager,” Phyl said with a slightly forced laugh. Competent adult? Who was she kidding? At the moment she was feeling more and more like that teenager again. “I can’t thank you enough for putting up with all that for me.”

“Well, like I said, you can do the same thing for me tomorrow night,” Steph said, toeing off her shoes. “And…and it was actually…kind of nice. I kind of liked it.”

Phyl tossed her coat and clutch onto the couch in the living room, unsure what to make of the nervous tone in Steph’s voice. “You don’t have to be polite Steph; I saw the stares, too. I probably looked like I was robbing the cradle.”

“Trust me, people staring is something I’ve gotten used to. You don’t walk down the street with my height and build and not get stared at. No, I mean, I…I liked the other stuff. Dinner and dancing and…and seeing you outside SHIELD.”

Phyl’s stomach tightened as she turned to look at Steph, who’d followed her into the living room. Steph really, really couldn’t be meaning what that sounded like, right? It was just Phyl’s imagination, interpreting it the way she wanted it to be. Steph couldn’t possibly mean—

“Um, I’m sorry, but I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” Steph said, taking another step forward and stooping to meet Phyl’s lips with her own.

Every thought vanished from Phyl’s head as she felt the soft touch of Steph’s lips on hers, and without even thinking, she leaned into her, placing her hand on Steph’s arm to pull her closer.

Steph pulled back just far enough to speak. “Was that okay?” she asked, her voice a little hoarse.

“What do you think?” Phyl said with a breathless laugh in her tone, lifting her head just far enough to kiss Steph back but only briefly. “You sure about this?”

It was Steph’s turn to let out a chuckle. “Are you kidding me? I’ve spent the last three hours staring at you and just wanting to kiss you but not wanting to do it in front of everyone else. I don’t exactly have a lot of experience at this kind of thing; I didn’t want an audience.”

It wasn’t exactly what Phyl was asking, but she wasn’t about to question it too much at the moment. Phyl leaned in for another kiss, deeper this time, and it wasn’t long before Steph had her arms wrapped around Phyl, pulling their bodies together, as Phyl cupped the side of Steph’s neck in her hand.

She was just pondering how to get them onto the couch without letting go of Steph or tripping in her high heels when there was a loud rumble from Steph’s stomach, one that Phyl felt as well as heard.

“Sorry,” Steph said, pulling back with a blush. “I guess I forgot to order pizza on the way back because I was too busy thinking about other things.”

“No reason for you to feel sorry,” Phyl said, smiling. Maybe the interruption was a good thing, as with anyone else she felt this kind of attraction to, clothes would be hitting thefloor about then, and she was trying to remind herself to take it slow.

“I could always skip the pizza…” Steph said, looking tempted.

Phil gave her a toned-down version of the look she gave junior agents when they did something reckless. “Your metabolism is four times faster than everyone else’s. If you don’t get some carbs into you right now, you’re going to be starving by two in the morning, and other than more peanut butter there’s not that much left in the kitchen. Order the pizza.”

Steph sketched a sarcastic salute. “Yes, ma’am, right away, ma’am.”

“Besides, we’re going to have to wait until the pizza gets here, and I can think of a couple ways to pass the time,” Phil said with a sly grin.

Steph leaned close to give Phyl another peck on the lips, then grabbed her phone and gave Phyl a wink. “I’ll tell them to take their time.”


End file.
